Blog for writing a new Vectrex game

23rd of April Philosophy change…

Nothing all too big.

But some small changes. I am not dead set on 50Hz ALLthe time anymore.

One of the last things that were not implemented in the spirit of our iPhone ancestor were different explosion types. I did not implement anything really fancy – but Release now features 5 slightly different explosion variants:

Bombers explode with shots instead of “dots”

Dragons explode with little tails instead of just dots

? explode in very bright dots – after all you destroyed something good!

Hunters explode in form of a “fading shield”

and the old explosion for anything else

I removed the “analytics” for explosion measurement. Meaning: Before – if explosions used to many cycles they were cut off – because I wanted to stay in the 50Hz area.

That is not the case anymore.

The new explosions CAN scratch the border to jump over 50Hz – for a fraction of a second.

But I feel as a player it is much more satisfying to see bright explosions and have the certainty “yeah – I brought Vectrex to its knees”, than to play 50Hz and see a little “plop” as explosion :-).

See:

If e.g. a bomber explodes now. It spawns up to eight shots.

Each shot consists of 5 vectors.

In a “Squad” level one can shoot up 6 or 7 bombers at one go (and other stuff)

Doing such a shot immediatly releases:

8 * 5 *7 vectors into the wild: = 280 Vectors!

Its looks quite awesome – and its very satisfying for the player to be visually rewarded. AND the Hz jump is over so soon – you barely recognize it.